Egypt Chronicles-Settling In

So when I arrived at Cairo International Airport at around 2am, after a delay, I was supposed to be escorted by my taxi driver Hussein out of the airport and straight to my hotel. Well there is a huge crowd that gathers outside the customs area and their are taxi and hotel drivers everywhere. I could not find Hussein and could not reach him by my cell phone because I couldn't figure out which country and area codes to use or leave off. I finally got someone to call him, after I bought a phone card for the pay phone. I could not figure out how to use the card or the phone since everything was in Arabic. Hussein was supposed to be the nephew of a very reliable driver of my friend. The friend's driver was already booked during my time in Cairo. Hussein drove me to my hotel in Dokki, but charged me way more than what he should have and what I was told he would, that was just the first of many problems with Hussein. I got to my hotel room around 3:30 in the morning all I wanted to do was sleep in a nice comfortable bed after 29 hours of travel. Well the room was not so nice and 3 stars in Egypt is not like 3 stars in the USA. My room had two twin beds and the decor was old and dingy. There was no heat and it was around 50 degrees. I put on several layers of clothes pushed the twin beds together, tightened the strings on my hoodie and quickly fell asleep. When I awoke in the morning I really wanted and needed a shower, the only freshening done in two days was brushing my teeth and doing spot cleaning with baby wipes in an airplane or airport bathroom. Well the shower was not the cleanest, but not filthy. I had almost no water pressure and no hot water. I was not very pleased, remember it was in the fifties, so I was very cold. I was booked there for 3 days, but I only stayed one night, it was called the Concorde Hotel. But bad shower was only the first of my problems in the hotel, I had scheduled a full body waxing...................